12 April 2007

Before arriving to Taiwan, I didn’t know I was “so Chinese”. As I have already said, I’m a banana (in between, I’ve discovered that the opposite – white outside and yellow inside – is called an “egg”). As I look Chinese, it seems normal that Taiwanese people at first glance, consider me as being a Taiwanese too. When I just arrived to Taiwan, I didn’t have the reaction yet to say that I am a “Huaqiao” or “Huayi” - that is to say “overseas Chinese” or “FBC” (French born Chinese) - I would simply reply that I was French when people would ask me with a suspicious look : “ You’re not Taiwanese, are you?” (I’m quite proud to say that I hear that sentence not that often now, must be a proof that my oral Chinese has improved a lot…) I even experienced some funny looks when I was saying with confidence that I am French like “I had no idea French and Asian people look alike so much…” Once, in a supermarket, I almost had an argument with the cashier. She would keep asking me “are you sure you are French? You must be Chinese, why do you speak Chinese with a funny accent?” and I had to moderate my answer explaining that my mother is Taiwanese but I was born in France etc… At the end she just said, “Well, you are still Chinese, that’s all!”

Is being Chinese a fatality? Or is a fatality being Chinese?

As soon as I arrived in Taiwan, I started having some identity troubles. Strangely, I almost never felt these itches while I was in France. Especially in Paris where people are so mixed. Maybe some would think I am a tourist, but everybody can potentially be a tourist over there, it mainly depends on the way you are dressed, your way of being, more than your physical appearance. It never came to my mind to say I am a French Born Chinese. Of course people would eventually ask me where my parents are from, if I was born in France. But my saying I’m French had never been something strange or rare.

Here, in Taiwan, I’m actually experiencing a strange transformation: the “banana-becomes-an-egg” mutation. First, I gradually changed my answer, now I always mention the fact that my mother is Taiwanese, etc. “Nice to meet you, I’m Cerise. Don’t be surprised, I’m a French born Chinese, my mother is Taiwanese but I was born in France and I have lived there almost all my life.” That became my name card. By means of repeating I’m Chinese, I really started to believe it (the “kouei method”, by auto-suggestion seems to work after all!)

Is this what immigration and integration are about? Before coming to Taiwan, I didn’t know whether I would acclimatize myself so much. Some of my Taiwanese friends say it is normal, it must be in my genes. Then I, my mother and my brother must also have French genes because we are pretty well integrated in the French Nation. For what I know, I am a “pure Han product”, I was born with two blue spots on the bottom (don’t worry, they disappear when the baby grows up) and I have a visible line on my forearm which are said to be the genetic marks of Han people. Both of my parents are Hakkas, a Chinese linguistic group and, when I was a child, my father used to say proudly that my brother and I were 100% Hakkas… with a “little something French”, would he add in order to tickle. Then, from the genetic angle, I cannot claim to be the result of mixes like American people for example (About that subject, read this very amusing text by Bob: My Chance Encounters with Chance.) But on the cultural front, I am the result of my parents’ past migration to France : a French girl with a little something of Chinese… Guess what!...

3 April 2007

Have you ever watched TV in Taiwan? It is very hard to find international news. There must be at least a dozen TV news channels which broadcast all the same stuff at the same time.Whenever I ask some Taiwanese about this phenomenon, most of them say that local people are just not interested in what is going on abroad. But what is the real cause? Are the Taiwanese TV networks not reporting about news abroad because there is no audience? Or are the Taiwanese not interested in watching international news because TV does not report it?

But maybe the main question does not even lay there or we risk falling into the unsolvable problem of the egg and the hen. As for myself, I think that it comes from the “island” mentality, predominentin such a small country. Thus, Taiwan besides being physically isolated, also seems to live in an abstract isolation. Taiwan is its own whole world.

Recently I read a Taiwanese short story called “The Clock”. It was written by Zhang Xiaofeng (張曉風) as part of her collection of short stories published in 1968, entitled Wailing Wall (哭牆). The story is about clocks and time: in a remote village of Taiwan, people start to be confused and disoriented when they realize that no clock gives the same hour. All the everyday life becomes a mess, teachers arrive 30-minutes late to class and a rivalry begins between the eastern and the western part of the village since each side relies on a different clock. The narrator is a disenchanted junior high school teacher, who goes to see a friend, a former teacher, who lives a misanthropic life, raising goats. They discuss the situation. The narrator says that, since nobody can decide which is the right time from the two main clocks of the village, why not look for a third source to decide a reliable time, for example a radio. But his friend just makes a violent diatribe against the necessity of having a radio. They don’t need a radio because they are used to living happily without knowing anything from the outside world. They know nothing about hunger in India. They are happy because they are not conscious of misery elsewhere in the world.

Is this one of the particularities of a “living-on-a-island” way of thinking? The island by its natural limits is also a castle which can protect from outside calamities, but what if the worm is already inside? In fact, the narrator is far from being happy: he seems to regret the time he lived in Kaoshiung (the biggest city in the South of Taiwan); he misses his girlfriend of that time; he was sent to the countryside after being at odds with the Head of his former school; he was punished for not conforming to the rules or local norms. A clock and the time it gives have to be normalized in order to be useful. If not, as in this story, dissensions may arise. Is it also because when we live in society, we need some norms, some rules to cling to or to bypass.

At the end of the story, the narrator lends his watch to his wife who goes to find out the right time. For the first time in a long time, he feels weird and then free without the watch he is used to wearing on his wrist. But as night descends on the village, the clouds of his dull life shadow once again his emergent hopes.